so im really teird but my friend ben just wrote up a little thing about what we’ve been up to. He did a great job so I’m putting it here:
After a long journey having spent 32 hours in planes not to mention the layovers at airports, we finally arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. After a day of rest, we visited Fountain of Life, Juja where they had an orphan home for 12 orphan girls. There we did fun crafts to spend time bonding with them and getting to know the pastor and his wife who decided to take them into their home with the help of their church.
We also have visited the original Fountain of Life (FoL) church where they give home to 48 orphan boys as well as school.
When we first arrived at FoL, I had barely stepped out of the van before one of the teachers on the campus named Wendy came and gave each of us a hug, all the while expressing her joy through words and a big smile. She reflected the general spirit of most everyone here at FoL when they met us.
In short, FoL began providing for many street children, eventually finding that they could only afford to help so many with food and other provisions. They decided to help orphans and reunite any others with their families. With time they built a compact campus on a plot of land where they had dorms to house 100 children and facilities for daily life and schooling for each of them. A few years ago however, the surrounding land was being bought out by rich developers and investers funded by muslim communities and countries who have a big presence in the nearby area. When the church refused to sell their land, these people paid corrupt officials to have their land illegally demolished. In the middle of the night, a bulldoser began to demolish buildings with the children still inside. Everyone made it off the property safely, but there was nothing they could do as there were police there who had been bought off. In 3 hours, they boys and their caretakers watched their home be demolished as well as several surrounding churches nearby. The court system is very terrible and the city council is known to be corrupt so the for FoL has still not been heard.
Today, they are renting a property from another church, but their deadline is coming soon to move out. They are down to 48 kids (12 of them had to be sent elsewhere to be taken care of due to the circumstances) and need money to build facilities on the new land they have. Until then, they are trying to get an extension on the property they are renting becuase finding a property to accomodate so many children is hard to find.
Yesterday, we visited with the children and toured their current facility. We got to play soccer (I’m still quite sore) and had a blast teaching them to play kick ball. I can’t imagine the kind of trauma they have been through throughout each of their lives. Some are very quick to attach to you, especially if you are male. Most have only had mothers, or a mother figure in their life.
Please pray for the children of FoL in both locations. Though there have been many hardships that they have faced, there are many joyful stories to tell as well, but that would take hours I don’t have at the moment.
Please pray for our team. For energy and good health. Derek, our team leader was very sick the past couple of days and is doing better today. The rest of us have just been trying to keep up with rest and energy.
Our team is excited for the rest of the month and we are all still adjusting to jet lag and getting oriented with the different opportunities to serve before us. It’s hard to express the kind of emotion that has been running through us the past few days. It is a mix of excitement and heartbreak, joy and sadness.
Thanks for reading throuhg what we’ve been up to. And feel free to email me but I probably wont get back any time soon.
xoxo
ryan
p.s. larium:crazy
